Tales of Vesperia is really easy to get on the 360 seeing as how it's on Games on Demand.

And since when is paying money for exclusives evil?

It's not a great way to have games to be exclusives. I DO wish there were more exclusives honestly, but I want them primarily based on doing things with the hardware that couldn't be done on other systems (at least at this point in time). Tales of Vesperia clearly is not one of those.

WITH THAT SAID: I have to wonder if there's some degree of misinformation. I don't doubt they paid for an exclusive, but permanently? Seems more likely they'd just have a global timed exclusive, and when that ran out they put out the PS3 version in Japan and didn't bother with America. Then again they could've inked a bad deal (this might explain the comments by voice actors), or were offered more for a permanent exclusive and opted out of that for Japan only because they knew they'd get more from making it multiplatform unlike here. Hell, maybe they're able to pay to end the exclusivity, and they don't see it as being worthwhile for NA and PAL.

Whatever the case, denying PS3 owners the chance to play this game showed a huge lack of respect for their fans.

It's Namco Bandai and the Tales Studio. It's kind of shocking to hear something like this accepted, but it's not too surprising to be honest. Their track record really wouldn't lead me to think they wouldn't do this.

Whatever the case, denying PS3 owners the chance to play this game showed a huge lack of respect for their fans.

You can take it as a personal affront if you'd like, but it was a business decision plain and simple. If you really want Vesperia that much, then pick up a 360 and the game when this generation of consoles is over for dirt cheap - goodness knows, there's enough other good exclusives to make such a purchase worthwhile.

Chances are, even if there wasn't an exclusivity clause, Tales of Vesperia PS3 would have never come out in the US. Releasing a port a year or more after the game's original release is a sure way to get a sales bomb - just look at Bioshock PS3 (and Bioshock is a drastically more popular series in the US than Tales).

I actually half expect Vesperia would've really done better. Bioshock's a US developed shooter, and most people who'd want those (or just similar games, let's throw stuff like KotOR in as a very loose "similar") wanted an Xbox anyway, or a decent PC.

Microsoft seems to have done this a few times, what with Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon. The difference there is that Mistwalker didn't port the games to the PS3. Eternal Sonata is a little odd in this case, but it was probably a trial run for the Tales of Vesperia engine or something in the first place.

One thing that I just remembered though, is that Namco Bandai basically tricked Microsoft into funding Tales of Vesperia for them, and they did the same thing with Tales of Graces. Both were supposed to be exclusives, and they used the money recieved from the games to port them to PS3 and make even more money with a minimum of effort. Tales of Graces probably took quite a bit more effort to port, but you get the idea.

Microsoft seems to have done this a few times, what with Lost Odyssey and Blue Dragon. The difference there is that Mistwalker didn't port the games to the PS3. Eternal Sonata is a little odd in this case, but it was probably a trial run for the Tales of Vesperia engine or something in the first place.

... You're making the same mistake the PR woman did. Much like Heavy Rain those two games are funded and published by Microsoft themselves, begging for ports on those would only be SLIGHTLY less stupid than doing so for Pokemon to iOS.

You don`t have to pay Namco to keep Tales games from being released in other territories. They do it for free all the time.

I don`t buy this story anyway. How would Namco community manager know about all this? And why would Microsoft moneyhat Namco for the US exclusivity of a Tales game of all things? Seems really desperate given how few people care about this series outside of Japan(and even in Japan Tales isn`t exactly all that relevant anymore). Might as well start moneyhatting Nippon Ichi and Vanillaware.

I actually half expect Vesperia would've really done better. Bioshock's a US developed shooter, and most people who'd want those (or just similar games, let's throw stuff like KotOR in as a very loose "similar") wanted an Xbox anyway, or a decent PC.

Maybe, but I doubt the PS3 audience is that different from the 360 audience. It's not like the PS2/XBox situation where the PS2 had a million RPGs and the XBox had next to none - if anything the 360 has more RPGs than the PS3 does.

In any case, it would be beyond stupid to localize the PS3 version now - the game's already been out for nearly 3 years. Outside of a tiny but very vocal minority, nobody would care.

It seems silly to get so worked up over this. This whole thing seems like bullshit. Localizations cost a lot of money and this wouldn't be the first time some expanded version was released in Japan, even on a different console, and then not localized for the US. The Tales series doesn't sell well over here so the question is were they even considering localizing the PS3 version? You can say all you want about respecting fans, but are enough fans going to buy the game to make it profitable? You can hate on Namco all you want, but this seems like a petty response to information that hasn't even been properly verified.